by Amira Rain
The following morning, while Ryan met with his council members, I was surprised when I answered a knock on the door and found Tom standing on the front porch. After I’d invited him in, he explained that when he’d returned Willow to her cave high up on Mount Arvon, she’d had a sudden thought and had given him something to bring back to me.
Reaching in his jeans pocket, he explained that it was some sort of magical powder that might slow or halt Alex’s growth, at least temporarily. “It’s made of some precise mixture of ground-up stone, dirt, and different kinds of dried flower petals and tree bark. Willow says that mystical healers have used this powder for hundreds of years to treat all sorts of ailments. She’s not sure if it has properties that might counteract a spell, but she said it’s worth a try.” Having produced a tiny cream-colored cloth bag with drawstring closure from his pocket, Tom now handed it to me. “You’re supposed to sprinkle the tiniest amount of powder on Alex’s head once a day…no more than the amount that would fit in one of the holes in a button, Willow said. She also said that you could just dip a finger in the bag, coat the very end of your fingertip with dust, then just kind of ruffle it through Alex’s hair, and it will work just as well.”
The moment Tom left, I went to the hallway and called down to Alex, who was building a blanket fort in the living room with Jake. “Can you come see Mommy, sweetie?”
I received no response after several moments, so I began walking down the hallway, not wanting to waste a second in getting some of Willow’s powder on Alex’s head. However, when I reached the living room, I wasted several seconds right off the bat because all I could do was stare, mouth open, standing stock-still.
With Jake observing by his feet, Alex was levitating objects. Pointing a finger at various objects around the room, including throw pillows, little metal racecars, and various other toys, he was raising them up to the ceiling before letting them drop in order to point at something else. When he pointed a finger at a foam ball that he and Jake often played fetch with, levitating it nearly up to the ceiling, Jake leaped into the air, trying to catch it in his mouth.
“Alex…baby, what are you doing?”
I hadn’t even asked the correct question, because I knew what he was doing; I just didn’t know how he was doing it.
Letting the foam ball drop, Alex turned to look at me, grinning. “Did you see that, Mommy? Did you see what I can do? It’s fun!”
Looking at him from the front now, I could see that he’d grown an inch or two, maybe even three, just in the half-hour that I’d been in the kitchen, drinking my coffee, assembling a hash brown casserole to bake for breakfast, and talking to Tom. Alex looked to be about six years old now, and even his manner of speaking had changed, sounding much more grown up now in a way I couldn’t identify.
Horrified, I told him we’d talk about his “fun new game” later. “But right now, Mommy needs to sprinkle some powder on your head, and we can’t wait another second.”
Moving a hand toward my pocket to get the tiny fabric bag containing the powder, I was stunned when I felt something soft brush against my fingers. I looked and saw the bag hovering in midair, just above my pocket.
Shifting my gaze to Alex, I spoke in a voice that held a clear tremor. “Are you doing that, sweetie?”
He shook his head. “No.”
The bag had already fallen, seemingly because I’d put my hand back down.
Laughing, Ryan clapped. “You can do it, too, Mommy! You can do it, too! Now, do it again, but lift something up to the ceiling, how I do.”
In complete disbelief, I just looked at him for a long moment. “What? No, sweetie, Mommy can’t-“
“Yes, you can. You reached for that little thing you wanted, and it just came right out of your pocket. I saw it. That’s how I learned to lift things, too. I was reaching for Jake’s favorite ball, and it just floated up into my hand. But then you have to try to do it. You have to point at something and think about it floating up. And sometimes, if you think real hard, the thing will stay up for a little bit, even when you point at something else. Now, try it, Mommy. I want to see you lift things like I can do.”
Feeling as if I were in some sort of incredibly bizarre dream, I slowly pointed at a throw pillow that was sitting on the hardwood floor, imagining it float right up to the ceiling. And to my complete astonishment, it immediately did.
Alex leaped into the air, raising a fist in triumph. “You did it, Mommy! Good work! Now we can both lift stuff! Oh, and guess what else I can do? I found a book called Read with Me in my toy box, and it has all the alphabet letters in it, and it has a talking voice thing inside the pages that says the letter sound of every letter each time you turn the page. It even says the sounds that two letters make when you put them together, like an e plus an a, and a t plus an h. That’s how I sounded out that the book is called Read with Me. And that means I can read now. I want to learn to write with a pencil, too. I’m too old to write with crayons now, right, Mommy?”
Just while he’d been speaking, I’d heard some kind of a shift in Alex’s voice and speech, a shift that had made his voice and speech sound further grown up, maybe like a seven-year-old’s. I’d also witnessed, with my very own eyes, him grow at least an inch. It had happened quickly and suddenly, but I knew my eyes hadn’t deceived me. I’d seen the top of his head rise, then had glanced down to see that his jeans were a good inch shorter on him than when I’d first stepped into the room.
With a trembling hand, I gestured for him to come over to me. “Please come here, baby. Mommy needs to sprinkle some powder on your head very, very fast.”
CHAPTER 15
I ended up transferring a bit of Willow’s powder to Alex’s head via the “ruffling his hair with a powdered finger” method, primarily because my hands were trembling so badly that I was afraid they might tremble a pinch of powder right out of my fingers before I could even get them to Alex’s head.
Alex asked me what the powder was for, and I just said it was like a vitamin. “Just like the chewable fruit vitamin you took earlier this morning, only this vitamin is to make you healthy in a different way.”
Nodding, Alex seemed to accept this, and I was very glad. He may have been growing and aging rapidly, but I didn’t think he was yet old enough to hear that some murderous Graywolf had put a spell on him by way of putting a spell on me, and that this spell might make him eventually die from rapid aging unless the murderous Graywolf who’d cast it could be killed.
Feeling as if I had aged a few years just since I’d woken up, simply due to anxiety, shock, and stress, I soon served Alex breakfast. Absolutely ravenous, he ate three helpings of hash brown casserole; two broiled grapefruit halves sprinkled with brown sugar; two pieces of toast with jam; and apple slices with peanut butter, washing it all down with a tall glass of milk and one of orange juice. I myself maxed out at half a serving of hash brown casserole, with what little I’d already eaten just not sitting right in my churning stomach.
After breakfast, Alex and Jake went out to the front yard to play, and I watched out the window above the sink while Alex ran all around, levitating rocks of various sizes with Jake on his heels. At one point, Alex levitated a rock that really could have been called a boulder, and I opened the window and called out to him.
“That’s too big, sweetie! It could fall on your head! Only levitate tiny rocks!”
Alex said okay, and I marveled over the fact that I’d just had to issue my son a caution about levitation, as if the act was just an ordinary, daily thing. As if I even knew why Alex and I could now levitate. The only thing I could think of was that maybe Frederick Bennett’s injury and his resulting loss of magical powers had somehow altered his spell, or otherwise simply “messed it up,” I thought, unable to think of any more articulate way to view things. And maybe that “messing up” of his spell had somehow given Alex and me magical powers.
“What else could have done it?”
Maybe the “messing up” of the spell has
also now made me nutty, I thought, realizing that I’d just spoken to myself out loud. As if all the stress, worry, and anxiety of the previous several months couldn’t have done it. Not to mention that my body had also had to grow a full-term baby in nine weeks instead of nine months.
After watching Alex a little while longer to make sure that he was only levitating small rocks now, I set about cleaning up the kitchen from breakfast. I’d just gotten the dishwasher loaded and the leftover casserole put away when Alex came inside, pointing to his inner upper arm.
“Look, Mom. I have little pink lines on my arms.”
Realizing with a little pang in my heart that he’d never called me the more grown-up sounding Mom before, only Mama and Mommy, I came over to him and examined his arms, finding very faint pink stretch marks on the insides of each of them. Thinking that I probably should have expected this, and suspecting that Alex probably had pink lines on his legs as well, I told him that we were going to have to start applying cocoa butter lotion to his skin several times a day. Miraculously, because of the lotion, I’d only developed the faintest of stretch marks during my pregnancy, despite the fact that it had progressed so rapidly. Or, Hillary had pointed out, it may have just been good genetics that had spared me from severe stretch marks, which I realized was true. But still, I’d started to think of cocoa butter lotion as a miracle product.
I was just finishing a mug of herbal tea, thinking it might soothe my nerves, when Ryan stepped in the door with his normally lightly-tanned face unusually pale.
“So…Alex can levitate objects now? And you can, too?” Not even waiting for my response, Ryan abruptly raked a hand through his hair with a sigh, then closed the front door. “I don’t even know why I asked about Alex, anyway. I just saw him do it.”
Sighing again, Ryan came over to me, then took me in his arms, frowning, and kissed me on the lips briefly before speaking again. “He looks about seven or eight now, doesn’t he?”
I nodded, sure I was frowning, too. “Yes.”
Instead of responding verbally, Ryan gently took my face in his hands and pressed his forehead to mine for a few moments, as if he wanted to communicate something to me telepathically. Which really didn’t seem that far-fetched to me, considering that two members of our little family could now levitate objects simply by pointing a finger.
After pulling his forehead from mine and releasing my face, he leaned back against the sink, folding his arms loosely across his broad chest. “At the council meeting, we decided to attack Shadow Fen in order to kill Bennett. There’s no way to lure him out of the village for an ambush, and a village attack will be better anyway. Best to take him and all his men out at the same time. If we don’t, a new leader will emerge in Bennett’s place, and the cycle of Graywolf attacks and attempts at land-grabbing will just continue. So, an attack on Shadow Fen is necessary.”
“When will you and your packs do it?”
“Within a week, I think. Or at least that’s what I was thinking at the meeting. I’m going to have to dispatch a few spying teams to the area around Shadow Fen, just to get some intel on the village’s layout and where the women and children usually congregate, so that we can avoid them during the attack, if possible. Doing this is going to take some time. But now…seeing Alex out in the yard and seeing how much he’s grown just this morning….” Raking a hand through his hair, Ryan paused. “I’d like to attack Shadow fen this minute.”
“I know, and I almost want you to, too, but that wouldn’t be good. You’re right to do all you can to try to avoid the women and children during the attack, and I’m sure you also need some time to prepare your men for battle.”
I almost added something about how I wanted them to be as prepared as humanly possible because there might only be this one shot to kill Bennett. If he somehow got away and escaped into the United States or Canada, never to be seen again, Alex would likely die within a year. However, knowing that Ryan surely already realized all this, and not wanting to put any additional pressure on him, I decided to just skip what I’d been about to say and move on to something else.
“Besides, Tom came by with a special powder from Willow. It has to be applied to Alex’s head daily, and it might halt his growth and aging. In fact….” I paused to take a look out the window over Ryan’s shoulder. “At least from this distance, Alex looks like he hasn’t grown any taller since I put some of the powder on his head before he went outside. So, hopefully, the powder is going to work.”
Ryan was incredibly relieved to hear about the powder, and just as hopeful about it working as I was. We soon moved on to discuss Alex’s and my new shared levitation ability. After explaining to Ryan about my “messed up” spell theory because of Bennett’s injury, I demonstrated my levitation power by lifting a fruit bowl full of apples and bananas several feet above the island, simply by lifting a finger. Then, just as slowly as I’d levitated it, I set the fruit bowl back down by lowering my finger.
“See? Alex has the right idea. It’s honestly kind of fun.”
I proceeded to levitate progressively heavier objects, moving from a barstool to stack of thick cookbooks to the microwave. Once I’d set the microwave down, Ryan looked at me with his gorgeous gray eyes twinkling and the corners of his mouth twitching, a very welcome sight after all of the tension evident on his face recently.
“Very impressive, Mrs. Wallace. But can you levitate the fridge?”
It turned out that I could, and easily. Finger pointing directly at it, I levitated it for at least ten seconds, only setting it down then because I’d had a sudden idea, not because I was feeling any sort of mental or physical strain.
“Ryan…I just thought of something.”
“What is it?”
I knew he wasn’t going to like this. I just knew.
“Let me be a part of the attack on Shadow Fen. Let me be a part of helping to save our son’s life. With my new levitation power, I can-“
“No way. Not a chance in hell.”
“Levitate the Graywolves to keep some out of our way while you and your men kill others.”
“No.”
I just stared at him for a long moment, observing that he’d tightened his arms across his chest and clenched his jaw. “That’s it? Just ‘No?’”
“Yes. That’s it. That’s the end of it. I don’t want you anywhere near the fierce battle that I know is going to take place in Shadow Fen.”
“You know, several months ago, I would have said that I don’t want to be anywhere near the battle. But I’ve changed since coming here to Briarwood, Ryan. I’m a better, braver, more assertive person than I ever used to be. I’m not afraid to leap and take chances and be bold now, and I want this to continue. I want to take an active part in saving our son.”
“And I’m saying that I can’t let you do this because you’re too precious to me and to our son. We love you, Julia. We need you. I’m not sure how we’d survive if something happened to you. I know my heart wouldn’t.”
“Well, I appreciate those sentiments, and I really mean that, but our son is too precious to me to not fight for him when I think I can help save his life.”
“Well-“
“What if I could really make a difference? What if a wolf on our side is in a really bad spot with wolves coming at him from every direction? I could really help by levitating all the wolves away from him.”
Frowning, Ryan began heading over to the door. “I still say no. I can’t take any chances with your safety and your life. I didn’t wait years and years to find a love like we have only to be careless with it.”
“But it wouldn’t be ‘being careless’ to let me take part in the battle. I could defend myself with my levitation, and I’m sure there would be help nearby if I got into any trouble.”
His back turned toward me, Ryan put a hand on the doorknob. “I need to go check in with Steb at the logging site.”
“Ryan, just wait.”
He turned his face to look at me. “You’re not
fighting in the battle at Shadow Fen, Julia. End of story.”
With that, he flew out the door, and I realized it was the first time he’d left the house without giving me a kiss goodbye.
CHAPTER 16
For three days, Ryan and I barely spoke. We communicated about Alex, and we made polite conversation over dinner. We didn’t make love. I was too angry at him for lovemaking, feeling like he hadn’t even really heard me out or seriously considered my request to be a part in the attack. He seemed to be angry at me just for being angry at him.
The good news in the house was that Willow’s powder was working. From the time I’d first rubbed a bit of it into Alex’s hair, he hadn’t grown a single inch. He hadn’t seemed to age, either, remaining at about a seven-year-old level in terms of voice, speech, and general look.
Nonetheless, when I took him grocery shopping with me the evening of the third day of Ryan and me not speaking much, everyone we ran into could barely contain their shock at how big Alex had grown. Not having any particular reason to, I hadn’t taken him into town since his major growth spurt the morning that Tom had brought the powder.